There’s one sniggering line of commentary against Christine O’Donnell, however, that has no place in voters’ decisions about whether to vote for O’Donnell: The assertion that O’Donnell once took part in Wiccan ceremonies, documented by a video from Bill Maher’s old TV show, Politically Incorrect. On that show, O’Donnell states, “I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things.”

“With her past dabbling into witchcraft, and statements such as, ‘American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains,’ candidate O’Donnell will have to explain to the citizens of Delaware what’s behind her some of her more controversial ideas past and present. “

Why should Christine O’Donnell have to explain to the citizens of Delaware if she went to a few Wiccan ceremonies years ago? What business is it of the citizens of Delaware if she did? O’Donnell is running for the United States Senate, not for a position in a convent of cloistered nuns.

The Constitution of the United States of America clearly states that religious identity isn’t an appropriate criterion for selecting political leaders. Article VI includes the direction, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

There are Wiccans all across the United States, in both small towns and big cities, and most of them are fine people, just like most people of other religions are fine people. There is no reasonable argument to be made that attending a Wiccan ceremony has disqualified Christine O’Donnell from public office.

Democrats who follow the anti-Wicca line of argument against Christine O’Donnell are allowing their partisan zeal to overcome their professed loyalty to the separation of church and state.

Share this:

About the authorJim Cook

I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve lived lots of places in the USA: the North, the South, the East, the West, and places in between. Every place I’ve been, I’ve seen acts large and small of kindness, callousness and disregard. Here we are. What will we do?

4 thoughts on“Don’t Blast O’Donnell On Witchcraft”

I’m not blasting O’Donnell on witchcraft, I’m blasting her for being a lying, ignorant, paranoid, media whore. She is campaigning on a Christian platform; she is using religion to garner votes. Her Christian supporters are no doubt in shock about the witchcraft thing, less so about her leading an organization with the sole purpose of stopping masturbation, and probably feel that she lied by omission. Nevertheless, they will overlook it, along with the fact that she used campaign funds to pay her rent and buy groceries. She is hard-core Christian and faith is blind.

Okay, Becca. Blast away on those things… but consider that the problem with her hard-core Christianity is not that she IS a hard-core Christian, but rather that she wants to impose her hard core Christianity on everyone else. It’s important to make these distinctions.

Being Wiccan wouldn’t be a problem either, but trying to impose Wicca on everyone else would be.

We could criticize her style on admitting she’d “dabbled into witchcraft.” Everyone knows it’s just plain unhygenic to dabble into witchcraft. If you can’t control your saliva output when visiting a coven, you should dab at your chin with a napkin.

It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.